This
past Easter Sunday, President Bush engaged the press. He couldn’t
have done this a week ago, but now he knows what to say. Because
Condi Rice, his National Security Advisor, said everything already
on TV.

Condi told 9/11
Commissioner Lee Hamilton, “Had we thought there was an attack
coming in Washington or New York we would have moved heaven and
earth to try and stop it.” Bush, being manly, says he would have
“moved mountains.”

Condi swore the
August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing memo entitled, “Bin Laden
Determined to Strike in U.S.” was merely “historical information
based on old reporting….There was nothing in this memo as to time,
place, how or where…. There were no specifics….” Bush, combining
Condi’s assertions with Hamilton’s claim that “some Muslims…hate
us,” said Sunday that “Of course we knew that America was hated by
Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going
to attack us, when and where and with what?”

Bush and Condi
imply that no mortal being could know, so no action to prevent 9/11
was possible.

But this is not
true.

The 8/6 memo says
it all.

Who was going to
attack? Al Qaeda.

When? Soon. The
memo states “FBI information since [1998] indicates patterns of
suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for
hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance
of federal buildings in New York.” “Recent” indicates preparation
for something happening soon.

And where? Well,
where are most of the “federal buildings in New York” located?
Downtown—just blocks from the World Trade Center. In fact, there
were federal offices—both overt and covert--in the WTC itself. So
location, although not exact, was deducible within a few city
blocks.

As to “with what,”
the memo states: “Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in
1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World
Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.” What “example?” A huge car bomb
that, in the WTC’s bunker-like basement, caused only minimal damage.

So this would
require thinking like bin Laden. Thinking, gee, bombing from the
bottom didn’t work. How about bombing from the top?

But thinking like a
terrorist may scare other people. And it probably wasn’t in any
course taught by Professor Korbel, Condi’s mentor.

So instead of Condi
and her “Vulcans” standing around a map of Afghanistan the day after
9/11, why were they not all huddled around a map of lower Manhattan
in the weeks following the 8/6 memo? Trying to think like
terrorists?

They were on
vacation.

But if they had
decided to try, they could then have asked: Why did Ramzi Yousef
choose the WTC in the first place? And why might al Qaeda choose it
again? To answer, one would have to actually know something about
Islam—a risky business in this administration, since one might then
be accused of actually being a Muslim, of hating America and Israel,
and then of being a terrorist or a sympathizer.

The main reason is
that the building is big, and would certainly get peoples’ attention
if it blew up, or at least fell down. Bombing the Cole, the Nairobi
Embassy, and Khobar Towers did little, really, to wake up America.
Bush himself said, oh, how did Condi put it? “He said he was tired
of swatting flies,” Condi quoted Bush as saying to her.

Swatting flies.

Al Qaeda is the fly
that roared.

And its roar is
about several things. Al Qaeda wants U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia
(although this has now reportedly expanded to include the whole
Middle East), and it wants the Palestinian situation rectified. This
may well mean an “end” to Israel, or at least to Sharon’s kind of
Israel. The Bush Administration could have done a lot to defuse
these contentions early on. In fact, the open presence of troops in
the Persian Gulf states, the constant Iraq overflights, the enormous
potential for conflict with local custom and religion, were never
taken seriously as issues of contention by Bush and his advisors.
And the chance for peace in Palestine, and the creation of a viable
Palestinian state? Squandered by the Bush Administration.
Shamefully.

And one would not
even have had to guarantee “peace.” How would Americans feel if they
knew that possibly this whole conflict—in New York, Afghanistan, and
Iraq—could have been avoided by the merest changes in U.S. policy
towards Israel? Just by, perhaps, letting U.N. resolutions critical
of Israel, for good cause, pass without the U.S. exercising its
veto. Truly, many Americans simply do not know the truth about
Palestinians’ stateless status, the seizure of their lands and
properties, the misery in which they are kept.

Most Americans,
frankly, think that if Palestinians don’t like Sharon, they should
just stop voting for him.

Most Americans just
don’t know.

Most Americans
count on their leadership to tell them the truth, as was done on the
issue of South Africa. South Africa’s white, racist regime made many
of the same arguments about giving black Africans the vote and
allowing them full citizenship and participation that Israel makes
about the Palestinians—that there would be a “blood bath,” that
“tribalism” would run amok, that the high black birth rate will
cause white South Africans to disappear. And yet eventually, the
United States came around, largely because of popular opinion and
education on the issue, and South Africa moved—not without violence,
but effectively—towards a better, more moral public order.

So this would not
have been impossible for Israel even a year or two ago. And
certainly it was not impossible before 9/11.

But now the fly has
roared. And the world is different.

But if one so dared
to further speculate on target choice, one would also reason the WTC
is largely a business, banking, and insurance center in the middle
of an even larger business, banking, and insurance center (virtually
all of New York City), and in the West, this necessarily means
interest, or usury. And nothing in Islam is more sinful. Usury is
more sinful than adultery, more sinful than even murder.

But no one, not
even Osama bin Laden, yet escapes this horrendous Islamic sin. And
al Qaeda’s actions have not eradicated this sin, but have
blasphemously compounded it.

Islamic banking’s
inherent dilemma is that virtually all the world’s monies move
through Central banks, which are Western, interest-based banks
linked irretrievably with international insurers. Bin Laden’s own
financing schemes, or at least parts of them, move unavoidably
through these banks and insurers, tainting his actions and making
him complicit in the very sin he seeks to impugn to others, and
profoundly punish. His actions ironically strengthen the Western,
interest-based finance system—one which Westerners will be less
ready to question, even though they are harmed by usury, because
Western banking looms as a bulwark against Islamic finance, which is
now wrongly but popularly viewed by Westerners as something
terrorists do.

In trying to be a
Muslim hero, bin Laden harmed Islam in the worst way imaginable.

If anyone in the
Bush administration had bothered to study Islam, they might have
been able to broadcast this fact from the first WTC bombing, and
derail the whole al Qaeda operation. Or at least discredit it,
dampening misguided enthusiasm.

Perhaps even get a
fair-minded, brave Imam on board.

Instead of Chalabi.

So inastute,
undeterred al Qaeda terrorists, unmindful they were attacking their
own banking system and likely dooming their own souls, selected the
WTC, which was not only the tallest building in New York, and one of
the tallest in the world. It represented the biggest sin in the
world.

Had Condi and
company known anything about Islamic finance or Muslims views of
usury, the memo and the “chatter” that accompanied it would have
been a clear signpost.

What would bring
this very, very, very, very big edifice and the very, very, very,
very big sin it supported crashing down?

As Condi quoted
from classified chatter, a “big event. There will be a very, very,
very, very big uproar.”

Big building, big
sin, big………bang?

Elsewhere, the memo
mentions “Bin Ladin want[ing] to hijack a US aircraft.”

One might simply
read newspapers. The 1996 incident where the Cuban government shot
down a Cessna aircraft piloted by radical Cuban exiles who illegally
entered Cuban air space and refused to leave after being repeatedly
warned to do so is on point.

The United States
excoriated the Cubans. But the Cubans claimed they feared the exiles
planned to use their plane as a weapon to bring down the Castro
government.

Gosh—would
anticipating planes being used as missiles or bombs mean that one
is—gasp—a Castroite Cuban? Better not mention having that thought.

International law
establishes airspace over a nation as sovereign for national
security. So it’s understood planes can carry weapons, and can be
used as weapons. Small planes have previously crashed into
government buildings, including the White House itself, so the
phenomenon is hardly unknown.

What was needed to
derail the 9/11 attack was creative, independent thinking, unstifled
by political correctness.

Instead, Condi and
Bush hold out their hands instead of exercising their brains, and
say, “Oh, if we only had only been handed a detailed memo with
specific dates, times, people, and places.”

But even then, they
say they would have failed.

At least the Wizard
of Oz’s scarecrow knew what anatomical part he was missing.

Condi and Bush seem
oblivious.

But very poised,
yes indeed. Condi on direct examination by her many Committee
friends was unstoppable. Condi on cross examination by her presumed
foes was still impressive.

Condi is used to
being handed all the information she needs to look smart.

Then, immaculately
coiffed, suited, and bejeweled, Condi does the rest.

The poised part.

But the thinking
part? Stanford’s teacher of the year gets a failing grade.

Pity the nation.
Pity the world.

Sarah Whalen
is an Islamic Law expert who writes for
Arab News.
She taught at Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia, and
at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans. She is writing
her first book.